Neal Stephenson - Interface

Tables had been set up at the back of the hall and piled high with Cozzano paraphernalia: signs, bumper stickers, skimmers, buttons. Vishniak scored an armful of stuff and festooned himself like the hard-core Cozzano supporter that he, in fact, was. He even filled out a little COZZANO FOR PRESIDENT stick-on name tag: HELLO, MY NAME IS Sherman Grant. He was amid relatively glum, drab National Town Meeting participants who had now been relegated to the outer darkness. As the hierarchy of introductions rose toward its peak, he shouldered his way through them, working toward center stage.

Like a lot of other secretaries of state, the one who introduced Cozzano had not been allowed to die a natural political death. He had resigned or been forced out, or something like that, in the middle of a term. Everyone concerned had agreed that it was over a question of principle on which reasonable people could honestly disagree, which gave this man the image of a person who was willing to stake his job on a matter of principle. As such, he was exactly the right guy to introduce Cozzano.

He delivered a lengthy and somewhat less than thrilling address about his career in big-time Washington politics and how disgusted he had been by the decadence and corruption of it all. He talked about the need for change. Finally, his voice began to rise in pitch, he started to pump the crowd back up out of the comatose state into which he himself had placed them, to pull them back in from the lines at the rest rooms, and by the time he bent forward to shout the name of William A. Cozzano into his microphone, he was completely inaudible, even to himself: thousands of people were screaming the name.

Cozzano appeared on the stage, holding hands with Eleanor Richmond. Behind them were four younger people: Mary Catherine and James Cozzano, and Clarice and Harmon Richmond, Jr., all holding hands.

The screaming, and the sound of the air horns, seemed loud enough to split the molecules in the hot sweaty air from the convention hall. The candidates and their families stood in a pool of blue carbon-arc light that set them apart from everything else, which now looked dim and yellowish by comparison, like a TV screen blaring in the middle of an antique living room.

It was just like when the Quad Cities Whiplash scored a winning goal with one second remaining in a playoff game, thought Floyd Wayne Vishniak, standing just below the dais, a stone's throw from William A. Cozzano.

He had a clear shot from here. But shooting him was not really part of the plan. The idea was not to hurt Cozzano, but to protect him.

Cozzano was a great man. A hero. The only honest politician in the United States. But even a great man could be led astray by the forces of evil, and Vishniak had been forced to the conclusion that it was happening to Cozzano right now.

Why couldn't anyone else figure it out? It was so obvious. They were all stupid. The world was full of morons. In all of the United States, only a tiny number were capable of seeing the truth.

They knew, of course. The people who were manipulating Cozzano had access to all kinds of secret FBI and CIA files. They could use their computers and satellites to pry into people's school records, police records, and bank accounts. They had figured out that Floyd Wayne Vishniak, and a few other people around the country, would see through the charade and would represent a threat to their conspiracy.

The couldn't just send out hit men to kill Vishniak and the others. No, that was just a little too obvious. Instead they were taking the subtle approach. All the way across Illinois, Vishniak had been laughing at himself. To think he had actually believed the ridiculous story that the little Jew had told him! "We're doing research on public opinion and we want you to wear this Dick Tracy watch."

Research on Floyd Wayne Vishniak's brain waves was more like it. They were watching him. Waiting for him to figure out the conspiracy and make his move. And he had played into their hands. He had worn the watch. He had even sent them letters, explaining his opinions in detail, and in these letters, he had made the incredibly stupid mistake of tipping them off to the fact that he was suspicious.

He could have just taken the watch off his wrist and been free of it, but he was a little smarter than that. To take the watch off his wrist at this point would probably mean certain death. They would send out a hit man to get him.

To hell with a hit man. The watch probably was booby-trapped. It probably had a little needle coated with shellfish toxin, and if he tried to take it off now, that needle, activated by a satellite transmission from ODR headquarters, would jab into the underside of his wrist and shoot the poison straight into his vein. But as long as he kept wearing the watch, they'd think he had still been duped. He could continue his careful reconnaissance of the Cozzano campaign.

This was the first step: to get close to Cozzano, to get a good look at his security apparatus, and so memorize the faces of the people who were close to him. Not the obvious ones like Eleanor Richmond and Mary Catherine - they were just pawns too - but the men in suits who hovered around the edges, just out of reach of the arc light's rainbow-tinged border.

The platform was huge, as big as the stage for a major rock concert, and it was hollow, and all of the mysterious men in suits had special access to the cleverly concealed doors and stairways that led beneath. All the doors were guarded by uniformed cops who Would only let certain people through; you had to have a special backstage pass around your neck. But from time to time when some bigshot went in or out, a door would swing open for a few seconds, giving Vishniak a glimpse into the hidden world under Cozzano's feet. What he saw confirmed everything he'd been thinking: thick black cables snaking everywhere, and banks of television monitors, men wearing radio headsets, talking on phones and typing on computers. And in the center of it all, hard to glimpse through the tangle of technicians and cables and structural supports, sitting right in the middle of the web, was a semitrailer rig, a nice new one. He couldn't see enough of it to read the words on its side, but he didn't have to; you could recognize it from its color scheme; it was a GODS truck.

He took a good look at the people under the platform whenever those doors opened up. These were the ones who were controlling Cozzano's mind. The ones who, sometime between now and Election Day, were going to be taking nine-millimeter bullets between the eyes, fired from Floyd Wayne Vishniak's plastic gun.

Vishniak jumped up and down and screamed along with the crowd. "I'll save you, Governor Cozzano! I'll get you out of this conspiracy or die trying!" But his words of encouragement were lost in the tumult.

Eleanor didn't get a real chance to talk to William A. Cozzano until several hours after the announcement. She had met him once, briefly, prior to the debate, and spoken with him in formal circumstances, in a conference room full of flacks and advisers, before the announcement. After the announcement they had spent most of their time partying in the ballroom of Cozzano's hotel. This had not been a real party, of course, any more than a talk show appearance was a real conversation; it had been a staged event, and she had had to stay on her toes the entire time. She knew, without being told, that she was going to have to get in the habit of holding her tongue more than she was used to, and try to avoid making gaffes.

Finally, shortly before midnight, she and Cozzano and Mary Catherine got together in Cozzano's hotel suite, on the top floor of the hotel, naturally. The women changed out of their party dresses and into comfortable, casual clothes, and they had a nightcap up on the balcony.